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Mark Shuttleworth To Step Down From CEO Role

Phoronix: Mark Shuttleworth To Step Down From CEO Role

Mark Shuttleworth has just announced this morning via a blog post that he will be stepping down as the CEO of Canonical, the formal company behind Ubuntu Linux. Jane Silber, the current COO of Canonical, will be taking over Mark's position as the CEO.Mark Shuttleworth though will not be leaving Canonical, but rather he wishes to focus more of his time on bettering Ubuntu and its products rather than the formal business responsibilities...

I'd like to think that he wants to focus on the basic computer user's needs and fundamental things like usability, work flow, and interface design. No clue how good he is at all of it but hopefully fairly decent.

Excellent move. That he has money doesn't mean that he knows how to handle a corporation. One of the mistakes entrepeneurs make when their businesses reach some level of success is to stay in the commander in chief role for longer than their expertise and experience allow, and things get screwed. The same way you would hire an expert to do xyz you hire a person who knows how to direct the company and step down to what you know. It shows that Mr Shuttelword has a brain.

No good will come of this. WTF happened to Gentoo Linux when the lead man in command stepped down? Where is Gentoo today?

Or, is this one of those "fake" stepdowns from CEO, like how Scott McNealy stepped down as CEO of Sun and supposedly let CEO Ponytail run the show at Sun? But you know McNealy is still running game from the back of the room and who Larry Ellison has on his Verizon Fav Five.

So Jane is going to run Canonical? Let's compare her performance to how did Hewlett Packard fare under the reign of Carly Fiorina? HP board of directors kicked her to curb in 2005. Maybe it doesn't matter because Canonical doesn't "make money" but it's obvious that Canonical is making MINDSHARE that few other companies/brands can even fantasize about competing with. Because I think Ubuntu is beautiful and HP-UX is a dried dog turd turning white in the late afternoon sun.